Austrian GP: Russell wins - but are Red Bull and Verstappen back?

The Athletic

The race is on and George Russell finally took his second win of the season, but Max

Verstappen posed a serious threat and finished just 1.6 seconds behind. But where did Red

Bull's pace come from and what happened to Ferrari's speed? I'm Ed Straw and joining

me here in Austria at John Noble and Val Hurungi.

Well John, fascinating race, lots to talk about so we'll get straight into it. We're

in a bit of air conditioning so we're okay at the moment. I guess there's two big stories

here. George Russell getting that win, but Max Verstappen, while he didn't quite manage

to win, he was right in the fight, very much in the hunt from fifth on the grid. He and

Red Bull back in business.

They're back in business at a track like this. I think we have to be quite careful

that these generation of cars have very different characteristics between them, power units,

the deployment, the way they harvest, use their batteries, the speed at

the end of the straights, how they're managing the downforce and balancing that off with

the power unit performance, how the IC is in relation to the batteries, all these different

elements. In these circumstances, the Red Bull is every bit a match for Mercedes with

Ferrari a step back. The upgrade has made a step. It's come from both more downforce,

better handling and a reduction of weight, which is free lap time. That's worked super

well for them. Coming from a long way back still, the points gap is massive. It's going

to be quite difficult. Max Verstappen and Red Bull are in this title fight, but we've

seen from history in the past that teams can come from a long way back before the summer

break, make that step forward. I think we've got maybe a slightly different picture in

terms of how we think the championship battle may pan out than we had two weeks ago.

I think the big thing is that the Mercedes is always there. One week it's Ferrari who

can do it. The next week it's Red Bull. That's pretty good news, I think, still for Mercedes

because that's what you start to see. You'll see that people get closer and then one week

it's 11 week it's another, but Mercedes is almost the fulcrum in that fight. The fact

that Verstappenval came back from that Saturday crash because it looked like he was going

to, I think, pole was beyond him, but he was trying to pull off a bit of a qualifying

miracle. He had a good run getting through only three sets of soft tires, fresh soft

tires for the whole of qualifying, got through Q2 just on a used set and then had that shunt.

The way that he was able to bounce back in this upgraded car that's got a few interesting

different kind of objectives, I guess you could sort of say concept, but some of the

things they're trying to do aero wise. There's a good Gary Anderson article that ran on the

race that you can read about that. I think it ran on Saturday morning, but that's a good

bounce back from Verstappen and Red Bull, isn't it?

Yeah, very, very impressive. Obviously, his lap up to the point where he crashed would

have been flattered by just how significant the track he appeared to be between run one

and run two and Q3. From just looking at it, we were being showered with purple sectors

basically at that time. There was a huge gain for everybody involved, which is also what

set up the possibility for George Russell to take pole while adhering to the way the

yellow flag regulations are observed in Formula One.

We're going to talk about that in the question section for anyone wondering about that.

Indeed we are, but yeah, he wasn't going to be on pole, but clearly he was very, very

rapid. He's probably the fastest driver differentiator of the weekend specifically on race space,

you would say, and this is not the first time that Verstappen, I don't want to say I'll

perform the car because I don't like it when people say that, but I am going to say I'll

perform what you would normally expect the car to deliver, especially in race trim here.

Hasn't this been the place where he, when Pierre Gasly got fired from Red Bull all those

years ago, this was kind of the place that got him, probably got him most of the way

to being fired. This is the place where Verstappen could really show up a teammate in that context.

Actually, Isaac Hager didn't do too badly, but it's clear that there's a special affinity

from Verstappen and ability to deliver here, and obviously the car was more nifty, but

still, the outcome, I think if you took a pure race space outcome, I suspect if they

all start simultaneous, they finish simultaneous and traffic doesn't come into play, it's probably

Antonelli first, Verstappen second, Russell third, potentially.

Yeah, I think they were all very similar. I think maybe Antonelli could have had a very

slight edge, but you're talking tiny fractions, not a 10, way less than that, and Russell

and Verstappen's similar kind of pace. The race was really interesting because Ferrari

will talk about later, but Mercedes went into it thinking, yeah, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton,

Charlotte Clarke could be the threat, and within a matter of minutes, it was clear that Ferrari

was struggling to everyone, and Ferrari was just not a factor, and Verstappen was the

looming threat, and of course Verstappen managed to, he did get an undercut on Russell at the

first stop, and then really the key was, strategically, that Mercedes not let Russell

be undercut at the second stop. I mean, we had a question, I'll throw in a couple of

relevant members club questions here with Frityov, who said, would Verstappen have won

if they undercut George at the final pit stop, or pitted at the next lap after George? Well,

if Verstappen had got the undercut, I think he'd have jumped him, and I think he'd have

been also, he'd have every chance of holding Verstappen off, of holding Russell off rather,

and once Russell had protected against, and Mercedes had protected against that undercut,

it was logical for Verstappen to get that offset, and it cost him something like 10 seconds,

so it was quite a big cost, but it did allow him to come back, and there was a point where

Mercedes projections did have Verstappen winning, but the kind of rate of gain just leveled off a

really well controlled by Russell, and in fact, Antonelli closing in on both was the

one who had the biggest threat in the end, but it's great that Verstappen was in that

position, great that Red Bull was in that position, but we should talk about Russell

as well, John, because obviously Russell's had a very storied season, should we say,

after Australia look like he was going to, yeah, this was his championship to win,

and it's been really hard work, he's closed to 40 points behind Antonelli now, so still,

Antonelli's in a great position, and I mean, Russell said Paul was crucial and then was

able to control the race, but he needed this win pretty desperately, didn't he?

It's remarkable, it's only his second win of the season. I've listened to commentary

towards the end of the race, and they mentioned, you know, Russell about to take a second win,

do you think, blimey, this is, you know, a long way into the season, Melbourne seems an age ago,

and you kind of forget how Kimmy got all that momentum back to that run of wins,

we've had the Lewis win, and George has just had, for some reasons, in his control, like Miami,

he wasn't as competitive as Kimmy, some outside of his control, like timings of safety cars or

retirements like Canada, he's lost potential wins, so it comes at a good time, it comes out of the

British Grand Prix, it comes at a time when the championship picture, you know, looked like it could

potentially be swinging into, you know, two weeks ago we were talking about, you know, is this now

a Lewis v. Kimmy fight for the championship, doesn't seem to be as nailed on now, potentially what

Max coming in, if Red Bull can get a bit of a head of steam, but I think it was important,

there was a weekend where, on equal terms, and I'm sure we'll talk about the qualifying and the

yellow flags, but at the end of the day, both Mercedes drivers in qualifying were faced with

the same scenario of a yellow flag, one driver did what he had to do to the letter of the regulations,

understood where the line was between behavior that would not trigger a penalty and behavior that

would get a penalty, and the other misread the situation, thought there was a scenario that

wasn't actually in play of there being a double yellow backed out of it, and that may well have

swung the entire weekend, because if Kimmy had started from the front row, because I think

your analysis showed that it was maybe a tenth or so behind George at that point of the lap.

Yeah, he was. I wrote down the number six, I always go through in some detail, and Antonelli

to his credit. 164 or something like that? I think it was about that, yeah. So, I mean, even

Antonelli had made up some pace through those last few corners, I think most likely he'd have been

second on the grid, so that would have changed the dynamics. If it started second on the grid,

then you can argue that he would have had a shot of going for the lead on the opening lap,

and if not a shot of going for the lead, with the way the kind of deployment was working out a bit

differently here, back into a bit of, can we call it mini yo-yo racing, that it wasn't as extreme as

we had the start of the season, but we were into that scenario where there was some turning

around. So, it would have been a different, the dynamic of the race would have been very, very

different, if Kimmy, through an experience, which he admitted he made a mistake. Toto says it was a

mistake that he won't make again, took place and defined the weekend, as sometimes happens in Formula

1, when one little event, be it in a practice session, be it in a qualifying, be it pre-race,

can swing the entire Grand Prix. So, 20-28 point gain from Russell versus Antonelli in these

past two rounds, and obviously the actual performance gap between the two was nowhere

near, 28 points, like not even close, and in fact, I think you could make a very cogent argument that

you still take Antonelli over Russell right now as the pure performer at Mercedes, so I'm

in a weird situation here, where obviously you'd rather have been Russell than Antonelli, these

past two rounds, 100%, and I don't want to say like moral victory, blah, blah, blah, anything like

that, and that's all total nonsense, but it does feel like Russell, what he is doing right now,

is still buying himself time to sort himself out, and I don't think he's fully there yet in terms

of what we expect from him. If you look, the way we've been looking through this whole weekend,

you know, practice qualifying, the way it's felt, even though Russell delivered more in the moments

that accounted more, which arguably you would expect from him given the relative experience

levels and given Antonelli status as a second-year driver, but it feels like the lap time at any given

moment in the weekend is still coming easier to Antonelli, and it feels like that, you know,

I think general practice pace and how easy lap time comes in practice is a good predictor of what

you're going to see in the future once the driver is a little more experienced, right, and I'm still

a little, I would say on George's behalf, I am concerned that how easy things seem to be coming

for for Kimmy in terms of getting into that top one, top two, top three with basically every lap

he does in practice, even if he underperforms in Q3 a little bit, even if he makes, you know,

the mistakes that he made at the opening lap this weekend, like the pace seems easier to access

right now, and that's why, you know, even though he's lost 28 points in two rounds,

you know, he has, you know, if he closes his eyes and doesn't look at the standings and the

eroded lead, which is still at a very significant 40 points, still, it still looks good for him.

Yeah, and ultimately, Antonelli can look at the misfortune of the past couple of rounds

in much the way Russell was earlier on, and that pace is still, I mean, Russell still had to dig

deep in qualifying. He said, I don't know where the lap came from. It's a bit like he said in

Canada when he really had to dig deep. I mean, Spain, that single lap pace came to him a little

bit easier, but Russell's, Russell's pushing himself. The important thing for Russell is

he's not wilted, but I would say the important thing for Antonelli is still, this weekend,

he was very quick. The problem he had this weekend was we mentioned the misjudgment he made. He

said it was my mistake. He thought it was a double yellow. It wasn't. So that cost him probably a

few places on the grid that would have changed his race. And then that was probably still,

that need to catch up was there in his mind. He had a few off track moments early on. There were a

few little moments late in the first thing when he was struggling with brakes. So there were a

number of kind of execution and perhaps errors. I mean, I think he said in the press conference

that he was a little bit overexcited early on. So he saw it, but he has still come out of this race

with third place, almost got Max Verstappen, even with that. So there's some lessons here for Antonelli

and they're always going to be this year, but he's still doing, he's still doing very, very well,

but Russell hanging in there. So that's what's making this a fascinating championship, I have to say.

We should mention Hadjar who, who had a kind of, okay, he had a bit of a struggle at times this

week and he was 0.157 off Verstappen, which there were, you can argue there's some caveats to that,

but he struggled a bit in qualifying, but in the race P6, so decent for him, but it's going to swing

with the, with the performance. But yeah, Mercedes is always there. That's still the,

the overall battle. And I guess the remarkable thing was that, that fight at the front Ferrari

just, just wasn't in it. I mean, a few other questions. Jim Al or Jim AI, John says,

was this the first race lost this season by Verstappen? It felt like you had the car and the

pace to reach one podium place higher in the end. Potentially. I mean, you can argue that maybe

Monaco could have been an opportunity if it got away from the line there, but not his fault.

Not his fault. But equally here, I mean, it's always the benefit of hindsight.

You know, Red Bull could review it and think if we'd made this strategy decision

or done something differently, then there's endless ways that that race

replays in a different way and he could have won. But I don't think he'll be too upset at all about

this performance because I think it means a lot to be back fighting it, fighting at the front.

And the problem was they needed to get the undercut that second stop, but it was almost

impossible for them to get the undercut because Russell was running ahead. And as soon as there's

any sign of Red Bull moving, then Mercedes would come out. And it was very clear what was going

to happen. It was going to be a box opposite for Verstappen because they were both out in the pit

lane. I was above them. So you could very clearly see the pit lane from where we were in the media

centre. So it was very difficult for them to force that undercut in any way because it was very easy

for Mercedes to be ready as they would have been poised to and cover. But I think the loss was

qualifying really, wasn't it Val? Probably. Yeah. But I mean, in terms of strategy also,

sometimes you see a strategy call and obviously it's always easy to say in hindsight that, yeah,

oh, this is how it was going to backfire. This is how it was going to be wrong. That one I felt

really good at about in the moment. Like it felt like Verstappen had closed up to Russell easily

enough to where creating a tire offset and allowing Russell to protect himself with an earlier pit

stop, earlier second pit stop, was going to be sufficient. It really felt like because of how

easy Verstappen closed in that second stint, but he seemed to come up to the usual sort of dirty

air buffer, not been able to make more inroads. Okay, so create a bit of a tire offset. You still

have the pure pace to close in and then you will have the tire offset to operate in that window.

Made perfect sense to me. Just didn't quite work. Ultimately, that picture in the second

stint was slightly a mirage. And I guess Mercedes always had it just about covered in the position

that they were initially in. Yeah, you're probably right about Verstappen in terms of qualifying. But

again, you could say this, you could say, you know, Antoine Alley, if he finishes the first

lap even in fourth, like he should have done, or the second lap in fourth or whatever, he just

stays fourth at the start of that opening stint. And he has the two Ferraris that are going to

remove themselves from the picture sooner or later, because of what they are in the race.

Then again, maybe he wins. It's part of that wider feeling that Russell wasn't necessarily

definitively the fastest, but had done enough to put himself in a position to where he was

fast enough then to protect that position. And we haven't seen him chase. So I don't know, maybe

as a chaser, he would have been faster still. Verstappen did talk about having a few issues

with the rear end of the car as the race went on and the bumps and curbs. It wasn't reacting so well.

So maybe that's something that he's struggling a bit with the brakes at times as well. So maybe

that explains some of it. He wasn't totally convinced by the strategy, but I think the

trouble is as soon as you're having to stop, I mean, you can come into the pits at the same time,

but pit stops really aren't long enough for there to be a change of position. And

that just locked you into it. One interesting footnote about that qualifying crash is Red Bull

did actually take responsibility for it, because there was something at the rear of the car. It

was either the locking mechanism on the active rear wing hadn't sort of locked into place,

or there was some flex somewhere that was leading to the rear downforce not being what it should be.

Just a note on that mechanism of the rear wing. I did notice on the grid before the start of the

race that the Red Bull mechanics were taking a very close look at the rear wing and it removed

the shroud to look at the mechanism underneath, which is unusual for a pre-race check. So it

suggests to me this was an area they just wanted to double check. Everything was in order and it

was all working. They put it back on again, but they were definitely working on it before the start

of the race. And if memory serves, I think they did change the rear wing assembly,

because obviously on the part for me on Sunday night you can change parts if they're damaged,

but obviously you would have a very close look at it if you think there might be a repeat problem

or something. But the fact that Red Bull lower makers were so emphatic in taking responsibility

for it, I think means you kind of give the staff and the passer because the rear just sort of went

and obviously it wasn't generating the downforce he expected, but still I guess a pretty good weekend

for the staff, but he still feels that the title isn't something that can be thought about. They've

still got problems to be tackled there, but made for an interesting top three and championship

wise. It keeps the narrative going, but I think Kimmy Ansonnelli, despite those rough edges,

he's come out of it with that third place. Lots of lessons learned and he's 19. He's in his second

season. He's at a phenomenal level, but the terrifying thing about Ansonnelli is how good he's

going to keep continuing to get. And there will be things he learned this weekend that will really,

I think, stand him in good stead and it hasn't cost him a huge amount.

You don't need to win every race to be champion, but you need to keep delivering the results and

being consistent. And if you can't win, finish second, and if you can't finish second,

you finish third. The worst thing you can do is throw everything at it to win and win it

and lose 25 points each race. Yeah. And that's what the points lead gives you, the chance to do.

I just have to say that last year when, you know, when Piastri had that lead, I never felt

as comfortable about the moment to momentability of Piastri in that, you know, particular situation,

formula with the rival cars around him, et cetera, to be consistently as high up the time sheets

in every sort of condition as I do about Ansonnelli right now. I mean, he makes the more glaring

mistakes, but he is also, I mean, he is considerably younger and considerably less

experienced than a very particular case. But it's just, it's, it's simple to say it's not

good analysis, but it feels like he's never slow. And over a calendar of this size, that's kind of,

that's always for me the trump card. Who's the guy who's never slow? Yeah, exactly. Which is why

I think these two weekends, while they've cost him, there's, this is still quite nice for championship

favorite Kimmy Ansonnelli, I would say. But ultimately, George Russell's day today, the win,

I imagine, is a huge relief for him.

Okay, John, we've managed to get through the whole first part of the podcast without mentioning

Ferrari, who were pretty much the focus of the first part two weeks ago after Spain.

I guess we weren't surprised that McLaren struggled. Oscar Piastri was fourth and

Landon Orris was seventh. But the extent of Ferrari's race pace struggles was pretty stark,

wasn't it? Lewis Hamilton was fifth, Charlotte Clair eight. How do they go from being the team

that Mercedes pre-race expected to be the threat into just not being a factor?

I think ultimately that Ferrari wasn't quick enough this weekend. I think they were, I mean,

they were in a difficult spot on Friday. The both drivers complaining about lack of grip,

lack of balance. There was a lack of straight line speed. And I think what we saw on Saturday was

potentially a bit of a false picture. A, primarily because I think George lost 0.16 seconds

through the lift in the final corner so that the grid advantage wasn't as big as it looked.

Anthony was out the picture. So you had a fake scenario of the gap deficit

to Mercedes and a car behind them. So that wasn't real. You have a scenario and we've seen this

with teams in the past that downfalls deficits, grip deficits, balance deficits can be overcome in

qualifying because soft tyres offer a lot of grip that can mask car problems. But then in a race,

if you have got a balance issue, the grip's not great, then your tyres are going to be sliding

more. And if Dex High, you're in a massive world of pain. So first of all, you had that problem.

Secondly, all season, everyone's talked a lot about the Ferrari chassis is great,

the power units not so fantastic, deployments an issue. And I think we saw an ultimate manifestation

of that this weekend that downfalls comes off because of the straights. So any advantage

they have in that area was basically negated by the layout of this track.

Power unit we know has been compromised through some choices they've made like the exhaust wing,

which back pressure cost them 13-ish horsepower. We know the turbo small, we know the boosts

temperatures running quite high. So the power I see is down, which limits your deployment.

And this unlike Barcelona, which was actually quite energy rich, with only one hugely long

straight where you're compromised. Here, there were 34 places where you were running out

of power. And it really exposed the massive weakness that Ferrari have got in terms of

deployment, because they were just losing a ton of speed at the end of the straights,

and everything falls apart. Because of that, you lose lap time, you're trying to push harder,

you're not going as quick, you're not harvesting as much, everything just falls into a world of woe.

And that was basically the story of their weekend.

And I think while there were questions about the strategy of Ferrari, fundamentally the pace

wasn't there. I mean, I asked Leclerc that, said there's nothing you could have done more strategy-wise,

like spending more time on the mediums, which they used in the first, and they had one set of mediums

each, and they got through and they were stopping on lap 12 and 13. And he said, well, you can always

do things a bit better, but if your car's not quick and you're sliding around and struggling for grip,

it doesn't really change anything. And I think this was the story of Barcelona,

that they bought the big upgrades to Barcelona, and we saw a completely different tire degradation

picture to other races. But I think the downforce was the simple problem, you have a good car,

your car doesn't slide, you look after the tires, and your strategy works beautifully how you want

it to do. If your car's not got the grip, you slide, every slide makes your tires hotter,

every time your tires get hotter, you're sliding more, and you just get into this vicious circle

that Ferrari was in. And I think, you know, rubbish cars do not have, end up with winning strategies.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you could say probably a Ferrari could have finished fourth Hamilton

record, he could have beaten Piestri, but he wanted to start on the softs. We did have some

questions from listeners, Chiv 2103 said it was clear early on that the Ferraris were dreadful

on the hards, why not? Did they continue putting both Lewis and Charles on them? Well, part of it

was just necessity, because they went into the race with two hards and one medium, they burned

up the medium early on and got off it quickly, realized the hards were a struggle, messed about

a bit with softs. So again, they were also just locked into that, because you always got to,

it's always worth being cognizant of what tires people have available. I think the Stapham was

the only front runner who had two sets of mediums available, which was definitely useful. But there's

another question here, Val from Dunw. Can we say Ferrari aren't in the title fight again now?

Oh, dear. Oh, my goodness. That's a real trap. But I have to say, I didn't, I wasn't on the podcast,

so it's easy to say, because there's no evidence exists. I was busy in MotoGP land or whatever,

but I didn't buy Barcelona in the way everybody bought, not everybody, I don't want to say everybody,

but I would argue our position was well, it's encouraging and you need to see more. So

Barcelona is probably up around Ferrari. This was this was kind of lower end. Yeah, I'm, you know,

I'm still in the like, I need to see more that Mercedes is again, real, real, real danger

before, before I feel any, any such way. It was a very impressive showing, obviously, in Barcelona,

but one weekend does not a title challenge make. And I mean, they're, they're, they're about obviously,

you know, Hamilton is still points wise in touch with, with Russell. I did have a brief feeling

when they brought him in for that, that pit stop under virtual safety car, that it kind of felt

like a team that's playing its strategy to try to make something work or try to like find something

that maybe isn't there, instead of trying to maximize points, which is what a team that

definitively was confident in its position in the title challenge would do, because

I think when you're definitely in the title challenge, you try to score every point available,

when you're not so sure, you're going to gamble and try to exploit the edge cases for race wins.

Ferrari now in the end, a lot of people actually seemed perfectly okay with the reasoning for that,

for that stop under the VSC to put Hamilton on softs. But it was suggested by Fred Visser

himself, wasn't it, that they were a little too enamored with the idea of trying to chase after

Mercedes today in this race, instead of accepting where they were and what the package allowed them

to do. I don't have the data in front of me, but I do think Hamilton could have finished fourth,

and I think if they went into it, trying to maximize their chances of finishing fourth,

or they would have been more likely to finish fourth, but I don't know, this is probably unfair,

because you want to have the specific scenario of how they would have done it,

and I'm not sure I quite have it in front of me, but that's the hunch.

I would say that given Mercedes, pretty much new Ferrari would not have threatened any circumstances

about eight minutes, probably half the start. You're right, they probably should have been

a little bit more onto that. There's another question from IEMI Tyro, who says,

could a high altitude and smaller turbo have played a role in Ferrari's lack of pace today,

and how concerned should they be for Silverstone? Well, they should be very concerned for Silverstone,

because there's lots of full throttle and not a great deal of braking. So I'd say Silverstone

could be even worse in many ways, given their deployment limitations, and the smaller turbo,

obviously, you have to work it a little bit hard for that, but their corner speed was okay,

but I think fundamentally it's deployment, and there's a number of things that John's gone through.

It's never one particular thing, but yeah, I wouldn't be betting anything on a Ferrari for

Silverstone. McLaren, John, probably less of a talking point, simply because they're roughly

where they were about, because I think both Ferrari and McLaren were about three tenths

off Mercedes on race pace, so it turned into the top group was two sets, just happened in the

Mercs, and then you had McLaren versus Ferrari, so yeah, McLaren was just what you'd expect,

they're just not as strong as Mercedes in an unexpected place, really. Yeah, I think this is,

I know you've got to quite say this is where McLaren are, because this is where they finished,

but this is where McLaren are. Because this is where they finished?

Yes, they're three-ish tenths off Mercedes. I think that is a manifestation, and I spoke to

and dressed Duller and Landon Norris about this over the weekend, that I think the reality isn't,

they accept that they're basically two months behind everybody else, which is a combination of

pushing on for the championship last year, and just being a customer team and being slightly

late to all the normal things that a works team would have in terms of installation, understanding,

all those elements that give teams like Ferrari and Mercedes and Red Bull just that bit of advantage.

So two months behind, the bad news for them is that their rivals aren't going to stop development

for two months, they can catch up. They're going to need to aggressively out-develop things,

just do things better, work faster, get all there, and it's not just downforce. I think what this

weekend has also exposed, I saw some telemetry traces yesterday that there are about 3, 0.35 seconds

off the pole, two tenths of that roughly is in the corners, mostly low-speed area, but 0.15

seconds is actually on the straights, so losing a lot of time on the straights, and there's not one

element factor there, it's probably a combination of many factors, drag, so they think the car's a

bit draggy, and interestingly they brought that experimental rear wing here, the upside down wing

whatever, we don't actually see it running because it got as far as being fitted to the car in the

garage and was off before practice even started. So that's obviously to shed drag, which they accept,

so they know they've got to shed drag. Deployment, they've accepted most of the season, they're still

catching up with deployment and how best to do it, so a bit behind there. And also the gear ratio

factor that they've gone short on gear ratios this year, I think you wrote a piece about this

three or four races ago, Canada maybe? Yeah sometime around there where it became clear,

so they slightly run out of speed at the end of the straights, so if anyone can you know pulls

up a telemetry trace of qualifying, if you compare Landon Norris' lap to George Russell's pole lap,

it's fairly obvious you can see where the the gaps are coming from, so they need to attack,

they need more downforce, they need less drag, they need some improved deployment,

and gear ratios unfortunately it's not something that, well it can be fixed in the season in

theory because you've had one change, but I understand that the workload, the complications,

the implications is just too much to bother doing it for the the upside, it would bring them,

so it's something that's more likely to roll into 27. Shall we move on to the midfield now, Val?

Let's talk about racing bulls, lovely weekend for them, class of the midfield,

Lim Lawson 9th, Arvid Limblad 10th, so that's a 1-2 in the midfield fight, job done,

but there was some agitation in the camp related to what happened between the pair during the

first pit stop sequence, so what did you see, how did that play out? I so nearly got away with it

didn't I? It was so close to going basically unnoticed, it felt like, and it's only the combination

of Lim Lawson betraying some dissatisfaction in the post-race pen and you seeming to notice

while tuning into the F1 TV feed of the two cars that there was an instruction to hold position

that then didn't quite align with what was being discussed in the post-race pen by the two drivers,

so the situation was as follows, obviously racing bulls in control of the midfield fight, there

was some reason to fear that maybe their qualifying advantage wouldn't translate in the race,

but it became pretty quickly clear that it kind of for the most part did without the only

real threat and everybody else pretty weak. Lawson leads Limblad in the early stint, they go

9th and 10th, I think after Pajar maybe clears them early or something of the sort,

but anyway there's not really much going on in terms of racing there, they bring in Limblad

first to cover off Gabrielle Bortoletto who had pitted a lap earlier, so when Lawson takes his

pit stop he comes out, he comes out right as Limblad is in the process of clearing a yet to stop

Oli Bearman in the very, very, very weak house this weekend, so Limblad on the run to turn 3 gets

Bearman then sort of accidentally almost or at least you know opportunistically gets Lawson as

well. He kind of has to make that move, I'm sure he wasn't too disappointed to have done so. No,

for sure, for sure not, but you know it is a move that was set up by the undercut that was created,

I would imagine, by the need to to avoid the undercut. Now Lawson immediately responds as you

do because as a result of that he's also gone behind Bearman, so when he gets the run out of

turn 3 that he gets he actually quite aggressively threads the needle between Limblad and Bearman

to restore his position in that pegging order and it looked quite robust, they didn't look

unreasonable but it looked like it was slightly flirting the disaster there. Now all throughout

that they are both being fed information out of the pits to lift off coming into those corners

to protect break temperatures. Which they've been doing all throughout the first day, so this

wasn't a coded message, this was break temperature critical. And as they're continuing to do that

Lawson who has now you know been informed by the experience of being attacked by Limblad who's

undercut him asks the team specifically all right I'll keep doing it but I'm safe from

attack from from Arvid right and Arvid again is being fed messages to lift off. Arvid has been

told to hold position at that point hasn't he and so the team goes to Lawson and goes hey yeah

he's not going to attack you you're fine and shortly after... Seconds after he's been told that twice

Seconds after he comes staming fast is reassured multiple times that in no way shape or form

will Arvid Limblad attack you again. Here comes Arvid Limblad attacking him again into turn 4

it's the attack enabled by the lift off the attack quite robust like on on on the on boards to the

point where Lawson you know it's legal but he got crowded out onto the outside of the corner

quite emphatically. Now the rest of that stint basically you know plays out in position of the

two and again they're in the race of their own they're nowhere near the top four but they are

in control over the over the rest of Meet failed and then coming up to the next time

they basically undercut Limblad with Lawson and then tell Limblad again hey this time actually

please hold position and this time he does he does acquiesce and it's like it had no impact

on the on the final outcome like Racing Bulls totally a hundred percent got away with it but

it was also because the way we actually went to research it the way we stumbled upon it is

you went to the pen and you heard from them both and then I you know I pulled up the audio

being up there in the media center in my walking boot refusing to to go to the pen because I'm

doing this weekend with a healing broken foot but yeah I listened to the audience and I was like

this sounds like more than a little sheepish and more than a little tense for what seemed to be

quite mild and we look into it and we find out it's actually not particularly mild it's a

significant case of an ignored team order it's a significant case of like teammate tension

absolutely out of nowhere hilariously unnecessary that they're a little lucky to get away with

just because the rest of midfield apart from Audi basically no showed this weekend I I have to say

not super impressed with with Limblad's decision-making in that particular situation

and with his approach after the race of well like you know we we safeguarded the position you know

as p9 p10 in the end so it's all fine nothing nothing major to it it's you know it's a team

order they're they issue it for a reason it's it's an important two positions for the team it's

the only two positions the team can get it's it is important for him to assert himself for his

future career you know prospects absolutely but I think doing it in such a way risks sending a

message that your career prospects and your career station is above what racing bull is

trying to achieve and I just don't particularly care that that feels like something Helmut Marco

would like but Helmut Marco isn't running things anymore the people running the Red Bull you know

making Red Bull driver decisions right now I do not think will respond quite as well to competitive

belligerence and cheekiness but that's I mean that's neither here nor there yeah the incident

itself it's uh yeah um when you get an explicit team order it does cause problems and there are

practicalities to it because I think there there can be a time and a place to ignore team orders

but make sure that stakes are very very high and there's an element of all's well that ends well

and there's Alan Permain came on the radio to Lawson just said on the when he's coming to part of

me just just be cool don't because Lawson because obviously Permain you Lawson had every right to

be furious because the reason this is important is if you're asking someone to lift and coast

so he's getting out of the throttle earlier to protect the brakes and his teammate goes past

so it's not it's not a fair overtake in that regard and there's a point where after that happened

Lawson basically says well that's the last time I'm listening and if you don't correct this I mean

John you obviously haven't been following this so this is probably all new information to you I mean

what do you make of it because it is a problem if it's more than just about trying to manage it or

manage your positions or drivers listening it can compromise your race because if if you can't trust

when you're told that your teammate because you're both managing the brakes is not going to do that

then next time you won't and then next time you have two cars that retire with with the brakes

cooked or something like that don't you yeah I mean trust between the pit wall and the drivers is

absolutely and I know you say there is a time and a place to ignore team orders but normally

we're well championships at stake I think that probably that's potentially the only time when

but even then I think you know there are a thousand people in the team working to help you out

and even if you don't agree with an order that order would have been given to you for a reason

I think I think there are I think that there are very very very few occasions where you should go

against I mean you can complain like mad you can be absolutely furious you can take it out on the

team boss afterwards you can complain about it and you can be unhappy but I still think that you

should have to follow exactly what you've been told to do because there is a reason for it

you're paid to do a job there are a thousand people relying on you to do that job

and if you didn't want this team order in place you should have made sure your contract

ensures that they never are put in place in the first because a lot of times you don't know the

bigger picture of what's going on yeah around you but the second the trust

is broken within a team I mean this is what the Andrea Stella famously talked about the poison

biscuits basically no once the poison biscuits start infecting an organization then the whole

thing collapses because if a if a driver cannot trust the reasons for team order if he fears he's

going to get stitched up then he doesn't follow instructions that are aimed at delivering the

best result for the team so I think it's as simple as that and they're never you know it's not easy

for teams teams don't want to impose team orders I'm sure every team boss would absolutely love

if they just let those cars leave the garage have their race don't interfere let them get on with it

and they'll come back happy and everyone's smiling and all that sort of thing but that doesn't happen

this is form one yeah I mean to to be clear on it my position of where you ignore team orders is

if we're running first and second and I'm ahead and for whatever reason they've decided to comply

rules me behind you and it's not going to make any difference as far as I can tell to the constructors

championship or anything else that's probably the moment I'll ignore it to win the world championship

it's it's like when it's the maximum possible personal stake but so this this obviously for

ninth or tenth yeah it's absolutely not the time to do it I think the positive is that it's a it's

quite a nice situation if you're Alan Permain who will have been very emphatic about this yeah

because they've not lost anything yeah and there's a what you might call a teachable moment yeah

Linblad already knew he was playing fast and loose I think he sort of thought well I've done it now

I'm just going to sit ahead and see what happens he said I wasn't very surprised they switched it

round yeah because Lawson they did tell him under the virtual safety car in that middle stint oh we

are going to correct this don't worry and there was some legitimate Lawson grumbling now 100%

Lawson is quite right to be irritated about this whole thing but at least for Linblad there's a

chance just to say to him come on mate don't don't do that it's not really you know it's not not to

make him mountain out of a molehill but it's not really a question of ninth tenth and fairness

whatever for me I take John's point completely over you know the the people that you are responsible

it's team it's yeah but I also you know I do look at it from a game theory perspective generally

is like you know it's balancing what you can get away with right because a lot of F1 for me a lot

of an F1 drivers work when it comes to balancing the team interests versus his own interests for

me does feel like what can you get away with and if if Linblad had had made that pass the one

when he went past Berman which kind of happened by accident he kind of had to make yeah and he'd

have stayed ahead there I think Linblad could have said well I wasn't going to but I had to and

then once we're that way around I think you've got a defendable position there but not if you

then make the pass the lap later having been repulsed but the value of that extra point is

just it's nil and the potential damage it can cause Jesus and the potential the potential

damage it can cause is higher than nil and that's like for me I'm not even thinking about in terms

of fairness I'm thinking about in terms of do the best thing for you this is not the best thing

for you longer term keep that in check because actually longer term from a game theory standpoint

or whatever you want to call it it is in your interest to preserve that trust right now and

maybe then if you need to erode it erode it for something more valuable my one wish is that

Netflix are down at racing balls tonight in that team meeting with Alan Permane because

Permane is a absolutely great bloke but completely zero nonsense but it does not

does not take there's no messing about with Alan nice you know hugely nice bloke great conversation

to Paddock but get some of it knows how F1 operates and will be will have been absolutely

crystal clear in his world a spades a spade here's a team order so I hope

we get to watch that on Netflix next year and meanwhile just from that game theory perspective

Lindblad's just given Lawson this massive moral high ground but Lawson's now just going to parade

around on the moral high ground throwing rocks at Harvard Lindblad quite rightly because that's

what you did because Lawson did absolutely nothing wrong so it was a fun illustration that one and

that was something it's worth us talking about it then because it wasn't on the the broadcast

John Audi it's sort of a mixed bag for them they didn't score any points Bortoletto 11th

near Kalkenberg 12th but still a pretty decent weekend considering this is a track that really

didn't play to their strengths Bortoletto made a really interesting statement on Saturday when

you heard from him after qualifying so based on what you heard from him and what you know about

the car how good is that chassis yeah so Gaby on Saturday had basically I was talking about

qualifying and said if if we had Mercedes or Red Bull power we would be fighting for P3 I'm not

sure if he meant actually position 3 or be the third best team either would be great yeah either

would be great but also Mattia Bernotto I think in a podcast or a video with F1 had said earlier

on this year that we've got the believe you've got the fourth best chassis which I then just ahead

of Aston Martin which yes which I then said did you is that when you said that did he actually

mean that he said yeah yeah that's what we think we've got so so I think that the chassis is good

Alan McNish as I spoke to tonight asked me about this but he was much more diplomatic so yeah yeah

you can look at the traces and where we're strong but Formula One's not about having a good chassis

it's about having a good car package and the power unit is definitely lacking they've been

pretty open about that the drivability problems which they've addressed with a

Aduo update that for some bizarre reason they denied existed two weeks ago and now openly

talking about two weeks on so don't quite know why they were so funny over that.

Audi is the team of utterly pointless secrecy I don't understand some of the time why they're

doing it but but there we go got to throw in great qualifying lap from Gabriel Bortolato

just one I think that might have been a qualifying in Q2 worth a mention.

One-tenth per sector over over in Niko Hoganberg isn't it and this is a pair of teammates that I

would place as maybe generally the the second or third closest in F1 in terms of the the average

gap between them the closest generally being the McLaren guys generally in my observation

you can you know you can have other methodologies and probably come out to other to other results

but that that would be mine. I do just want to throw in as a shout out we do we even though

it's the car package that obviously matters it is nice that Audi has come up with this

chassis and it's under the leadership of James Key right if I'm not mistaken so

he will get a fair bit of credit for that and it's kind of nice for him because he's been sort of the

like the the the dynasty starts after you guy at at McLaren isn't he is you know his reputation

has gone through ebbs and flows in in in F1 and it's nice that he's been able to spearhead

wise clearly been quite a successful successful chassis rollout it is hilarious every single

time to look at the constructor standings and see where Audi is still currently at this point

in the season and see where Williams with their thing is so that still remains after this weekend

where Audi was on the cusp of the points and just needed 11 retirement somewhere or a couple

to get a decent haul in and Williams was racing in some other championship and then still there's

you know there's a gap between them in the constructors in in Williams's favor

yeah so mcnish said tonight that this he felt this was out his best weekend basically if you

start go through three practice qualifying and the race in terms of the result fine there's no

points and it is incredible they've only got two points yeah just as uh I was you know surprised

this was once I mentioned Russell second when you thought oh really when I was sat down with um

someone asked the martin today just talking about their prospects and hopes for the second

half season and getting points and moving up the constructors I just presumed that the gap

between the back and those ahead would be miles and then I looked on the internet what is the

constructors I don't know how many points Audi have got and it's two the Melbourne it's incredible

which is just going back just really really strong because they've had such strong weekends

yeah um Bortoletto was thrilled to have the have a good start that's this is great

because they've been shipping positions at most starts which is what's been blowing those point

shots yeah and it so it appears that the aduo upgrade in Barcelona included a smaller turbo

less inertia more responsive yeah exactly which appears to have helped alongside other

drivability tweaks just have lifted that main problem of the starts so if they can

get themselves nudging not necessarily into key three but on the reach of key three not ship

all the points then on lap one and actually start racing where they qualify then it should

lead to a second half the season where things are better especially this upgrade a track where

actually ultimate downforce isn't what you need so I think silveston would be a much

more interesting and clearer picture of where out is up it's also nice that they generally

tend to have two cars on races now that helps that's you know that's useful because when you've

had one car just randomly decide not to start the race that generally was not conducive to

the point scoring by and large so at least shows them making progress on that side of things quick

mention for alpine valx I was kind of expecting alpine to be stronger that gazdi started 11th

usually they're a bit quicker on race pace but what went wrong for for gazli I mean it's a good

what went wrong for both isn't it because ultimately colapinta also expected to

to at least be a factor in the points also based on how barcelona played out for for the two of them

but you know but this is another evidence like like in the ferrari case that these were two very

different race situations despite the commonality of you know temperature and multiple pit stops

in a you know attire limited race alpine had some meaningful error upgrades here most notably a

front wing and it feels like the driver spent a good chunk of the weekend figuring out new

ways to say uh we're not quite sure about this one yet or that certainly that they didn't seem to draw

a particular benefit from from what they've introduced this weekend specifically at the

Red Bull ring so it's it's not been the smoothest introduction to to the novelties that they that

they have on the car uh both got bad starts which slightly uncharacteristic I guess for for for alpine

and gazli was 13th that basically early on fell behind icon and bought a leto yeah and um colapinta

was much further back isn't he yeah he had a really yeah colapinta was because he started

down in six years always a little bit up against it so but it was also they just they they didn't

have it they just they they were chewing through the tires they weren't showing anything particularly

impressive in terms of pace I remember um when it was the final vsc that came out and the only

the only garage and the only car that was able to exploit it to get a full pit stop in because

there was a very short one it was when was it when album hit the ballard or was it when yeah it was

a really short one very short one the only person in position to pit under it and basically get a

free ish obviously not free but free ish pit stop was was ghastly and I was thinking oh this will

introduce a new challenger into into the points battle and then I looked at the gaps in the

lifetime and I was like oh no no we're near just they're not there they like whatever you can give

them 15 free pit stops and that will not change in in this race so just you know just about weekend

if if I could give you a more specific answer then probably malpine would hire me to fix their

stuff they're struggling a bit on traction as well which is an ideal around this this track but

yeah the rest of the midfield has still struggling a bit i was complaining about

downforce missing there's been some they have admitted to some parts inconsistency across

though those cars but it has affected both at different times this season but i wasn't delighted

Williams were just not very quick which is an unusual science obviously retired with that

electrical problem of some sort and Aston Martin were being Aston Martin and Cadillac only lasted

about five minutes in the race before out so they're out with the brakes overheating so

starting park yeah pretty pretty much yeah absolutely that that's that's why they got confused

right starting park pocket the start money but yeah for good pace for the heavily upgraded Cadillac

did seem to work but obviously wasn't working in terms of work right side of things

right we are going to finish off as usual with some questions from the race

members club thanks for everybody who sent them in and if you want to join the fun and

sign up for the race members club which gives you question asking privileges all manner of other

things thriving community bonus content our popular in car insights podcast that we do on

usually Thursday Friday and Saturday evening at Grand Prix and loads of other stuff hit the

link in the episode description or head to patreon and search for the race to find out more the first

question is from Jack Rudd for you John have the FIA set a dangerous precedent by allowing George

Russell's qualifying lap to stand without penalty no i don't think so i think there is debate to

be had about whether they could have reacted quicker to Max Verstappen's car being off and

whether it should have gone to a double yellow earlier i think that's the

debate was that process handled in the best way you know maybe it should have gone double yellow

sooner but i think the the process of having and i think this is something that goes back to the

there was the controls at 20 i think 2016 Hungarian Grand Prix when Alonso had gone off

Rosberg had gone through a yellow flag double yellow and lifted and there was huge controversy

at the time about should the lap have stood or not then you've had various iterations of these

rules because drivers have requested certain things that then there was a like if a session

called for a double yellow then the fo would effectively red flag it instead to get rid of

these shenanigans which was then felt to be slightly unfair so we've ended up in a scenario

where there needs to be some differentiation between a yellow flag coming out for a car that's

not necessarily going to impede anything you want qualifying to play out and you don't want a scenario

where you know drivers are pushing on their qualifying laps around the second and third sector

and then someone goes off at the first turn and double yellow comes out the first turn and then

everyone loses their lap because that was that was felt to be slightly unfair so i think the scenario

the rules we've got at the moment are totally fine you've got a single yellow

which means you can lift for instance that's deemed to be that double yellow for more serious

incidents i think the way they're judged is great the differentiation is really important

my only issue with the whole thing is whether it should have been double yellowed sooner

the question from Kate who said in collie would answer nearly a pit rustle to poll if he hadn't

bought his lap in q3 although i've addressed this it's worth mentioning again yeah i don't think he

would have done even though he was quick through the last couple of corners rustle had taken a step

at the end of fp3 on that as well and yeah it was about 0.168 at the point if you compare

anton ellie's uh aborted lap to the well not well he backed out of the lap he completed it to

rustle's poll lap at the point of lift so pretty unlikely that anton ellie would have made up

made up that that time but obviously it had been second on the grid for it kimmy said the same

thing himself i think even in the pen when i when i spoke to him afterwards he said you know i wouldn't

have been wouldn't have outqualified george anyway would have been on the front row but

as we found out today even that front row start may have made the difference

val there's a question from eric bryan who says i understand the explanation for why rustle's poll

that was allowed to stand but i'm concerned with the fact that while it met the letter of the regs

it didn't comport with the spirit of them do we anticipate that this will be reexamined so that

a driver cannot drive near quali speeds through a yellow flag zone shouldn't the driver actually

slow down meaningfully and do more than just a quick lift and back off the throttle i think it

does comply with it with the spirit of the regs well it depends on what we describe as a spirit

and what exactly we take as as regs if we take as regs the fia international sporting codes and all

that then okay maybe maybe not but if we take as the spirit of the regs into the the precedent of

regulation within formula one and how such a flag has been treated generally then i think

unquestionably that complied to the spirit of the regs i i do see the the point i i i do think

that ultimately if we go to that then you just want also the single yellow to be an automatic

lappor asia when you pass through it just you know if i i think the distinction has to be whether

can a qualifying lap still be completable at pace if you've passed through a yellow zone

or not and under the current fia approach to the situation it is it is very clear and should be

very clear to everybody that yes it is intended for a qualifying lap to still be potentially

valid and legal as long as a driver has stepped away from the edge of of you know stepped away

from the edge of adhesion and given himself a bit more margin to to go through the corner i mean

for me that is that is very clear that has been the the precedent and

russell complied with it and certainly i just want to use this question to

my brain has been leaking out of my eyes and ears listening to some of the stuff written about

russell and russell's approach to that corner on social media and i know what you're gonna say

you're the idiot for reading that and letting it reach your brain to where it's leaking out of your

eyes and ears but i think you just have to look at the onboard once and see how aware he could have

been of the actual exact scope of the situation and then like 80 or 90 percent of of those comments

fall away anyway this is stupid i should not have brought this up this is uh is my entirely

issue i just want to i want to bring it up somewhere and extract some use out of it some

sort of content because otherwise i'm just a moron who's read a bunch of twitter posts that made

him angry i i do think it's with the data we have is if the order of four kilometers an hour

minimum speed lower in that last corner he did lift off early he did give away about a tenth and a

half i i do wonder whether for that sort of one that's that's quite enough because that is a corner

where yeah the thing i'd always be worried about is a car going off hitting the car the self-seek

for stepping are still in the car there are no marshals in there's no recovery vehicles or

anything that that would have changed that but you know as russell saw if it's a single yellow

you know there are no people or extraneous vehicles around you know there's not a car in the middle

of the track or scattered around the track you know whatever it is it's going to be off so

russell complied with the rules didn't he so you can argue about whether it should be a double

yellow or whether the the the amount you give away should be a little bit more that's a legitimate

argument but that doesn't mean that russell wasn't correct establish it now i think but

thing you think you're correct that if you had a car so say here at turn one a final runs of q3 a

car runs down the escape road at turn one and goes behind the tyre barriers a yellow flag

would have to come out for that so then do you therefore say that any driver if you take this

extreme therefore you have a red flag the session because there's a car behind the barrier or the

yellow flags you shouldn't be allowed to get your pole up because this car's behind the barriers

you need this differentiation yeah so the issue isn't the rules in terms of yellow flag lifting

the issue is was that incident worthy of a double yellow and i think the answer to that is yes

so the question is more and it was a judgment call based on the heat of the moment and you

can't get all of those right absolutely spot on and in the end they did acknowledge it was

a double yellow it just so happened that two Mercedes managed to get through while it was a

single i want to mention one thing which i just tried to look up but i can't because the internet

is suddenly not working but there was there was a discussion in the the race members club community

that interacted with a bit and in that someone who had been a flag marshall said actually there is

another problem here in that the kind of standards that are applied in a lot of racing versus f1 are

a bit different so this is an experienced flag marshall who said actually that that for stop

and crash would always be a single yellow flag but there is a legitimate question question from

that about whether the the extent to which single yellows are respected in in f1 is correct so i

think i mean that that question was about whether there is a discussion to be had and i think there

will be a discussion because the fi does revisit these things and that that needs to it again comes

back to that thing of okay so should it have been a double yellow which needs to be a good faith

review yeah and i think that's that's fine but yeah which it will be uh john more on these this is uh

from andy willoughby who says why wasn't a red flag shown in q3 when max crashed like when charl

likler crashed in q3 in barcelona that was at turn four and that was on the first q3 runs if you

remember he tried to carry a bit more speed in that was early in the session wasn't it that's the key

so getting towards the end of the session and i think this was one of the the the factors that

was mentioned to me um when i spoke to someone at the fi about why the decision-making process

is that there is a judgment call that the fi a doesn't want to rush into the double yellow

situation unnecessarily so it doesn't want to just instantly dive in and um go to double yellow

because that then effectively kills the the session if you go to a red flag that's the end of

everything and i think it's 60 i think i can't remember if it was it what it says in the sport

and regs it's like 65 seconds or something random in terms of a session to be restarted

so if q3's at the beginning loads of minutes left then you will if Verstappen had done that on his

first run in q3 it would have been red flagged instantly because it's time to clear it up

doesn't impact anyone no thing when you get towards the end of the session

the preference is to not go double yellow unnecessarily you want to absolutely double check

and then this was the the decision-making process and while people talk about it was 22 23 seconds

between the the two messages on the timing system you got to remember that first yellow

was when max started to spin so you still had two or three seconds before he's actually in

the barriers then you've got time everything in terms of dust settling assessment situation

if there had been debris on the track if the car had been in the track if max was out of the car

if there'd be marshals on the track it would instantly have gone to a double yellow

so in the circumstances did they react slowly yes but i don't think it was an absolutely outrageous

call that you know this is this is terrible that it didn't go instantly to double yellow or red flag

i think you can understand this and it's a live dynamic high pressure situation that was being

observed and if it had come five seconds earlier would we have would there have been even more

controversy and would people say you didn't need a double yellow this so it's a question from Nick

Thix that i'll take saying i was wondering if something should or could be done to more properly

explain incidents like the george one in quali for the commentary even though it was explained

later by written media the whole race still felt like george russell benefited from breaking the

rules purely due to how the commentators were talking about the qualifying lap in the moment

but maybe i'm just too influenced by commentary during quali when i'm maybe a little more focused

on it compared to the race commentary obviously in this case the big problem is

when you're doing the live commentary you're doing it live that was a particularly confusing

situation because there was one message that that said that the russell was being looked at

and then there was no further investigation but there was another confusing message which

was brought to my attention that said russell lap time deleted and so i spent a few minutes

trying to work out what's going on here and eventually got it clarified that that was

the slow that was the in lap russell that got deleted along with some other people

so if you're doing live tv you're reacting to all of this and you don't have time to stop for a

few minutes you can't stop talking about it while you go and find someone from the fia or message

someone so it is very very hard for them and i think anything you can do to to tighten that up

is is important but i understand why because my thought process as soon as i saw the crash

i thought okay they're not improving so i thought it was a Ferrari front row

and i was slightly surprised by by russell going quicker and then jumped on to and rolled it back

fractionally to look at the onboard of russell and thought oh that's not good that's no good

because it's really hard from the onboards to tell if it's a double yellow or a single yellow

and even worse on the onboards that they display this bizarre greenness yeah which is even more

confusing well is this is it a yellow or green or a double yellow or what's the green element there

but it's not green at all it's just yeah something to do with a camera system so my first reaction

was oh i think he's going to lose that and then i realized from listening to the radio that they

were talking about single yellow and i listened to kibby anson ellie saying oh it's a double yellow

and bono saying no no it's a single and so that happens over a few minutes and i don't have to

say anything on live television during that point but if i'm i'm just going to guess you

were listening to sky sports f1 here that could be wrong i wasn't listening to them but

people like david croft and korean chandok etc they're all just reacting to the information

that's coming to them and yes ideally it would be explained clearer but the trouble is a lot of

people will watch qualifying and then they're not there 15 minutes later i think there was a sky pad

thing they did so it would have all come out in the aftershow but i think there's a valid point

there about the fact that i think a lot of people will have seen that as somehow incorrect or whatever

or tainting russles russles win or whatever but i'm not sure there's much those in the

commentary booth can do about it maybe the fi could be even quicker at just messaging them but

they're pretty good at that now the fi actually and they're pretty good at answering those questions

it's just you're basically having to do that over the space of 123 minutes on completely

limited information often conflicting information so i think your point is valid but i'm not i'm

not really sure i mean i've been in that commentary box helping out and it and it's really hard because

it's a keep track of everything and give the definitive answer my only point of confusion

in that situation was why the inlap after the checker flag was being recorded as a as a valid

lap because they don't show up on the on the timing sheets usually so i was i was pretty sure that

that was the lap being deleted because eight other laps were being deleted from the eight other guys

who were able to make it to the pits under double yellow the only car not being able to do so was

you know max for staff and it's red bull parked but i don't know why it's recorded it'll be an

automatic system though yeah you get this you get it for track limits as well yeah when people

break track limits on outlaps or inlaps it still gets logged and recorded but those are in session

a lot of these things are just automatically recorded by computers then shuffle through the

system and it does it can cause some confusion there may be something they can think for future

okay can we suspend those just to avoid if this ever happens again but i don't think it's a

disaster but obviously the big thing is we as well we're written and spoken media or whatever but

we don't have to record we didn't have to record a podcast for this while Russell was still in his

inlap in which we committed to our definitive conclusions yeah and that that and if we'd done

that we'd have been uh perfect we would have got absolutely spot on yeah we'd have

certainly been not as correct as we would have been 10 minutes later if you like because we just

do have that luxury so that's what i'm i'm willing to defend uh tv commentators on because there is

an enormous amount going on you just got to call it as you best see it and you best understand and

i imagine there was a bit of confusion talked about sir there right question from val from val

oh from val question to val from shul nerfie what did you think of the drone shots at turn 45

and six i thought it made following the overtakes a bit more difficult there was a couple of times

where it worked fantastically i thought but they kind of went to the well maybe one time too many

or a couple of times too many like that's that's one that i would prefer for them to use sporadically

i mean they they got the timing quite right in a couple of moments early in the race where it really

presented uh a new and unique and unusual angle at a side by side going through that that section

of the track uh and it looked super super nice but it did did lose a little bit of its uh a bit

of its novelty later on and you do want to also see you know other angles of that particular

section which obviously for much of the race we did and also it does still occasionally make me

puke ever so slightly but yeah but i did i did like i did i did generally like it i was pro it

it was it was a source of heated debate in in the races it works like

next question is for you john from miles mason since redbull have been considered the benchmark

for aduo does this mean they cannot upgrade any of the power units or can they still upgrade non

ice components so they the final result or official publication following the review the fi doing

isn't complete yet we anticipate it will be completed after the british grand prix pre

spa um but from all our understanding is there's no evidence the fa's original finding was wrong

the front we understand redbull's not provided any uh evidence that's convinced the fi that

its findings were wrong so i don't think the results going to change and uh it will mean

for this period at least because there are multiple aduo periods over the year there's

no one that runs from monaco to hungary for now it means no upgrades of anything um so redbull could

make improvements for reliability reasons which can in some senses then allow you to

turn the power up a little bit this is effectively what misade is has done this weekend with its battery

and new ice it came into play they're not aduo improvements they're reliability improvements

but you can lean on them a bit more so redbull could do that but unless uh in period two there's a

shuffling of the order and it's not impossible that based on different track characteristics

different power unit requirements different performance profiles that there could be a

scenario where another manufacturer is deemed to be ahead in this period and redbull gets his

aduo then it can upgrade but then we're going to end up i think ultimately this is probably going

to happen that redbull will get granted an aduo and then we're in a scenario where everyone's

got aduo and then what's the point of having any of it in the first place aduo for all yeah that's

the that's the campaign slogan right question from shirag Shah i was curious to know how the

cooling vests fared this weekend and which drivers use them for the race and what do they report back

there was a lot of chatter in the cooldown room about the drink system but not this also wondering

if any cars did add the mandatory five kilos of ballast weight to the car if the driver opted

out of using the cooling vest in the race and whether that had any impact on the respective

cars performance yeah once the heat has us declared i think the rule is you have to carry the the

cooling hardware yeah and the optional bit is the vest which i think is only half a kilo of ballast so

you can say i don't want to use the vest and you you take the half kilo of ballast but the hardware

has to be there and functional so you basically have to make it so your driver can use it if they

want to the cooling vest don't work that well in terms of the fact that when it's hot in the car

hot ambience and everything the cooling effect is limited so you might get 20 minutes or so out of

it maybe yeah as you said it was good for about the race start and then after that wasn't so optimum

exactly and some don't use it some do it's it's of limited use i mean her drivers in the past say

actually it's a bit more useful for say qualifying if you just just keeps you in that that window

but it's it's of limited use but that there shouldn't be any performance difference for

using the vest because the vest is the only optional part so the kind of thing is

you don't you not use it if you just think i don't want this i don't need this this is useless

in which case you take the ballast hit right val a question from nate b this could be a whole

podcast in itself but the short version is this the worst shall the clerk has ever been in f1

i mean no there's there's there's no way i still remember the shall the clerk of the first

two rounds it's out when marco sarkson had him covered and then that swung pretty dramatically

and there were there was either one or two periods in his time with carlo sciences teammate i would

say that things conspicuously shifted towards science for a bit before leclerc was sort of able

to take back control i mean ultimately he can't be that bad if he you know he did out qualify loose

hamilton this this weekend i mean clearly something isn't isn't working right in in race

sense i would be lying to you if i said i have a great mechanical understanding of it i mean

obviously the the whole breaking thing has been going on under his dissatisfaction with breaks

and experimenting with you know other brake supply and brake materials and and whatnot but

what what i will say is clearly this change of regulations and the the evolution of these cars

early on under these regulations has produced certain swings in teammate pairings and some

teammate pairings have basically stayed the same as they were last year by and large statistically

that's what it feels like at least but we've seen the russell-antonelli thing and the the

leclerc-hamilton picture kind of feels shockingly similar in in the broad pattern if not necessarily

in the specifics to to the russell-antonelli picture this this weekend i think like

russell versus antonelli leclerc basically from the outset looked on the back foot versus hamilton

just tracing it through practice and following practice he just didn't quite look as easy in

accessing the lap time but he was able to execute better in q3 end up ahead obviously russell made

that count in the race leclerc was extremely extremely limited in his race performance he's

clearly not right but it's also important not to maybe overstate the amount of not not rightness

especially in a in a season of this length and especially with a driver with such a

a proven run of performance i think it would only like truly be alarm level

78910 whatever right now if you were convinced that the this is ferrari's

opportunity to go for the title and i'm just i'm not quite there yet if if that if that changes

over the next couple of rounds and it is hamilton capitalizing not leclerc then suddenly there'll

be a valid a very interesting conversation to be had of how he's you know potentially squandering

the the best opportunity he's had in terms of machinery but i don't think we're we're at that

point yet we'll come back to you in the future for the leclerc alarm level sure i think that's

a good good feature of the podcast right john a question from chris powerett the in car insights

team were pretty confident that overtaking would be difficult this weekend but we saw lots of moves

on track what were the factors which drove the upswing in on track action who were these idiot

in car insights team i don't know suck them immediately not me i had not to do that that was

one of those where i was in the background somewhere i'm pretty sure you were suffering from

my peanuts where i was pronounced that word more yeah john bought some peanuts in a gallery when

we picked up and and we didn't know that i had an allergy so fortunately

nothing too serious but that can be quite serious so yeah yeah so ahead of the week

race everyone was talking about how difficult was going to be overtake i think what played out today

and it's the first time we've seen this probably since before miami when they changed all the

boost rules with just different deployment patterns that because you were energy starved here so there

wasn't enough power for the various straights so if you deployed in one area then you didn't

have power for another and if there was this offset between cars then effectively you were

this is what was creating the overtakes so i think it was this variation and this is what

happened in uh pretty sure as miami was a similar thing where people are deploying in different

parts of the track and then this is what triggers the overtakes so somewhere like barcelona for

example where there's any very clear straights and everyone's fairly locked into a definitive pattern

you don't get the the level of overtakes like we got today there's i say mini yo-yo-ing but here

you could run on the the run out of turn one down to turn three or the run between three and four

you're basically picking your your poison do deploy into three go for the overtake and then be exposed

coming out do you save up a little bit get overtaken and overtake on the way out so i think this this

was the the element that maybe factor some of the tracks i mean i can think of monza for example

there may well be a lot of move moving around there based on where people are choosing to deploy

and save yeah because there was a very conspicuous move particularly clearly born out of the energy

situation when antonyla got the clear at turn nine and i think all of us were like oh the closing

speed on that is like we don't we don't love that so much so you know turn nine who overtakes

the turn nine or was it was one of those corners that you don't really see overtakes on a conventional

red bull ring race i guess the next question comes from bob who says how worried should cadillac be

about their constant overheating issues uh enormously worried because their brakes overheated

and they did a combined total of six laps across the two cars which is pretty disastrous obviously

a lot of people were concerned about break overheating but yeah what they've got there wasn't

working they were meant to have some counts well they did have some countermeasures and there was

greater cooling capacity generally from the upgrade but they cooked the brakes immediately and this

has been an ongoing problem this is pretty serious uh i i don't know for sure but i imagine

they're looking at do they need to change elements of brake supplier i'm not sure exactly the part

from i think they've got ap brake discs i think they're the only ones but exactly what is going on

there there's just clearly an element of probably cadillac not being as on top of the cooling as

they should be but also the hardware i wonder if it's got the uh the the heat characteristics that

you need so they will be very very worried about this austria is going to be at the upper end but

given that basically they started the race and instantly cooked the brakes that's about as bad as

it gets so some work to be done there but new team these things will be happening but a bit of a

shame because good upgrade on the car sent the quickest car and they're doing very very well

but there are going to be these these problems but this is when they need to get on top of pretty

quick right val the final question to you from adam barton after three offs in the first two laps

was cami antonnelli unable to go off for the last 69 laps without getting a black and white flag

oh because he because he did go off and he did get a handful like a couple more laps of race so

it did not appear like the and i don't actually know if this is official policy across all tracks

i'm not totally convinced but the what happened over the first lap at turn one and turn three

was not recorded as as tracks limits violations for the purposes of counting towards towards

that penalty or towards towards a warning and they were placed they weren't investigated but

we saw on on race control timing that they were noted but antonnelli was cleared and as having

gained an undue advantage and then they did they just did not count that as as track limits violations

for the purposes of the of the race tally and then the the third one on lap two where also

the two ferraris breached in that same place that that did count and then he had two more

and then at that point he would have been in trouble but not not the not the 69 laps yeah

enough he didn't get the black and white flag did it no no i don't think so so he's never that close

to it yeah i mean ultimately those track limits violations on the first lap did not help his

cause they made his life much much harder so uh yeah they didn't really need to on that you you've

got to have a certain amount of i guess leniency in that because that's not pushing for pace and

just abusing track limits systematically so uh you get away with it well thank you to everybody

who sent in questions a great batch there really fascinating austrian grand prix so thanks very

much john and val for your inputs we're going straight into another race at silverstone next

weekend so stay with us for everything you need to know from the british grand prix

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